


you know the two of us are just young gods

by l_cloudy



Category: The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: F/M, Future Fic, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-09
Updated: 2015-09-09
Packaged: 2018-04-19 23:51:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4765640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/l_cloudy/pseuds/l_cloudy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He's not so sure he wants Caroline back anymore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you know the two of us are just young gods

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bodhirookandor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bodhirookandor/gifts).



> Weird and moody and quite possibly OOC. You have been warned. Title from [Halsey](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUhJRQSs6UQ).

The sky is lilac and pink by the time they get back, rising sun shining over cobblestones and peach blossoms and Caroline’s golden hair, warmly. It suits her; the softness of the light and the lingering shadows make her look even more alluring, innocent and mysterious at the same time. She smiles up at him through the wavy curtain of her hair, satisfied and half-sleepy, like a kitten.

“I liked tonight,” Caroline says. She gets closer, loops one of Klaus’s arms around her shoulder, tiredly. There’s no blood on her clothes, naturally. Caroline keeps herself clean.

“I liked your friends. We should go again… oh, tomorrow?” She yawns. “I’d love to go out tonight, but I’m just so –” Another yawn, just as undignified as the last. “I need to _sleep_ , Klaus. Don’t wake me up, or I’ll kill you.”

From anyone else, that sentence would earn cutting mockery and a healthy dose of physical pain. From Caroline, he laughs. “Don’t worry, love,” he says. “I would never. We have all the time in the world.”

Truth is, they don’t.

It has been seven years now since the day Caroline Forbes showed up in New Orleans out of the blue, in the rather unpleasant moment following Elijah’s brief victory. Brief, because after that day – after Caroline had found him in the dusty French Quarter apartment where he’d been busy licking his wounds and told him she was ready to see the world, after that day Klaus had just…stopped playing. The game had grown tiring, and so had the city that had once been so magnificent, the family that had been his eternity.

Caroline went, and he followed.

Seven years, since the day Caroline left Mystic Falls abruptly and refused to tell him why. Klaus had spies, of course, could have found out what had happened in the blink of an eye – but she asked him not to; and he didn’t.

That had been one of the only two requests Caroline had made of him, the other being not try to force her humanity back on. Klaus had smiled at that, brushed her hair away from her forehead and leaning in to plant a kiss on her brow.

“Caroline, love,” he’d said. “Why would I?”

Had Caroline been in full control of her emotions, of course, she would never have come to him.

The truth was, the spark of Caroline he’d always enjoyed – _treasured_ , even – that spark was still there. This new, more pragmatic version of the woman he’d come to… know was calmer, perhaps a bit more mature in the way she carried herself. She was still amusing and always entertaining. She could admire beauty; her eyes sparkled just as they’d always used to. She smiled and acted as if she enjoyed their time together, as if it was something to be cherished and not mere convenience. She took him to bed again and again, as methodic in her quest for pleasure as she was in her feeding, controlled and ruthless. Bouts of emotion – of genuine _anything_ – were rarer than he could ever have imagined, and all the more precious for it.

And in trying to make the world beautiful to Caroline’s dull eyes, he’d found himself again.

Klaus took it as a challenge at first – to make Caroline’s smiles brighter, their lovemaking more intense, to find a way to see those beautiful eyes shine with wonder once again. And it was two years later that he realized the effect their journey had on him – how, in putting so much enthusiasm in their traveling, trying to see everything as a first-time should and Caroline could not, he’d found himself enjoying the beauty around him so much more than he had during his younger years.

It was nothing like he’d ever imagined – and he’d pictured his future with Caroline, many and many times over. Of course, in none of his fantasies she would ever leave him.

Reality, however, is a much different thing.

Klaus does like to pride himself on his rationality. What Caroline has acquired through shutting down one part of her own being, Klaus has carefully cultivated across the centuries. He’s impulsive and prone to outbursts, but his reasoning never fails.

It doesn’t take half that wisdom to know that Caroline will run away the moment her emotions will come back in full. It’s not the remorse; Caroline has done little to feel regretful for, dispensing death with the carful parsimony that’s the mark of a true immortal. Most vampires turn off their humanity unable to deal with their natures, yet ready to commit further kills; and almost inevitably get found and stopped. Caroline is of course nothing like that, always so precise and careful. Her soul, if such a thing even exists, is was not overly tarnished by their time together.

Her emotions, on the other hand, aren’t as safe.

Whatever happened to Caroline that caused her to turn off her humanity is still there, untouched and undealt with, festering like a wound. Whatever her emotions were seven years ago, they haven’t changed. Indecision. Self-doubt. Utter contempt, of this Klaus makes no illusion, for the immortal being who shook her world so soundly almost a decade ago, telling her all about how one day Caroline would change her mind, how he’d be proved right.

Caroline does hate herself for giving him, he’s sure, under all those layers of numbness. Almost as much as she hates Klaus and he – he’s not sure he wants Caroline back anymore. The young girl who charmed him with a sharp rebuff, who challenged a thousand-year old being and made him feel more alive than he’d been in centuries – that girl is gone. In her place is a woman, cynical and weary and not quite as much of a challenge anymore; but Klaus is done fighting.

He’s never felt this old his entire life.

“We have all the time in the world,” he tells Caroline.

Most vampires turn off their humanity unable to deal with their natures, yet ready to commit further kills. They leave bloody trails and badly-covered tracks, easy pretty for hunters and witches all over the world. Almost inevitably, these vampires get found and killed.

One does not live to be more than a thousand without learning a few things. Klaus has never turned off his emotions himself, but he knows more about the process than every other being alive. In truth, there’s no switch. Denial is a powerful tool of human mind; in a vampire even more so. It lasts until the killing sprees are done, until the vampire is old enough to deal with their nature. Sometimes, it may last up to a decade.

After that, the process gets harder to repeat. It goes on for less. As the years go on, turning off human feelings becomes more difficult.

He should know it; the older you get, the hardest it is to fool yourself.

“We have all the time in the world,” Klaus tells Caroline. Sometimes, it may last up to a decade; after that, she’ll run the other way screaming.

He kisses her on the lips. She tastes like oranges and sunshine.

They don’t.

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the prompt ‘Elijah succeeds in subduing Klaus, and no humanity!Caroline decides she'd set him free’. As I haven’t watched TO in a while and have no idea what the current Elijah/Klaus situation is like, this story was set a bit later down the line. I hope you enjoyed it anyway :)


End file.
